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My father, Leonard, was a great man for spinning yarns. As we paddled in the sea he would be telling us to watch out for sharks. Of course there were no sharks, but we wouldn’t know that.

Then he would say: “Look – there’s a whale out there.” There was no whale, but we would feel sure we saw one. Then he would tell us to look out for pirates.

A ball always played a great role in what would do – Dad always kicked a ball around with his three boys.

Food is not made to be eaten on the beach. Often my mum Josie would make picnics but we soon realised it was not a great idea. To this day, if I eat something with crunchy salt in, it reminds me of eating a sandy sandwich on the beach.

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We felt great freedom there. We wore hardly any clothes, saw no cars, were off school and had no times to be in for tea.

The Holmes family

We’d get to our holiday destination, usually a guest house in Cushendall, and couldn’t pick up any TV. The signal could not get over the mountains in the Glens of Belfast to the coast, so the picture would be very grainy and we couldn’t see our favourite programmes such as Top Cat, Blue Peter and Crackerjack. That made us do different things.

And I thank my father for this. We would watch films at the cinema in Cushendall with him, and if we had seen a war film then walked in a leafy lane, my father would say: “This is the jungle.” He would convince us we were in Burma. He was able to transport us anywhere in the world so we forgot about TV and instead we played and escaped to different scenarios.

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That’s the great thing about fresh air and reconnecting: you do things you wouldn’t normally do, and that’s what a holiday is all about. I recently filmed at Giant’s Causeway and was down at Ballycastle where we used to have a caravan. Being there was better than medicine – the smell and the mood people were in.

People there walked with their hands in their pockets, which people didn’t do in the city.

They’re basically saying: “I’ve got nothing to do, I don’t have to be anywhere particular. I’m just going to dander along, looking in shop windows and talking to people.” It’s much more relaxed.

The sights, sounds and smells of the seaside are in my blood, heart and soul. The idea of that not being in my life or my children’s, of not knowing those experiences, seeing those sights or smelling those smells, would leave me very sad indeed.

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It upset me to learn that one in five kids in England have never been to the beach. That is why I support the Daily Mirror’s appeal to help the Family Holiday Association send children to the seaside for the first time. Imagine going through life not knowing what the seaside was like? It doesn’t cost a lot to make memories that last a lifetime.

It shouldn’t be out of reach for far too many. I took the beaches of my childhood for granted. The Giant’s Causeway is a World Heritage Site, but this was a coastline and beaches that I grew up with – wasn’t everyone’s beach like this?

What I also had that was even more precious than that was a loving family who took me and my brothers out of Belfast to enjoy the seaside. And I am forever grateful for that.

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